Nokia’s Lumia 900 may have received a ton of attention at CES this year, but it was just one of two Windows Phones that AT&T announced, the other being the 16 megapixel packing HTC Titan II. Impressive as both those devices may be, we were expecting to see a third Windows Phone with 4G LTE show up at CES from Samsung. According to a user agent profile discovered by Pocketnow, there’s a device called that Samsung SGH-i667 that exists somewhere in the wild. Said device is codenamed Mandel, and it’s rumored to be the successor to the Samsung Focus S, which was released just two months ago. Specification wise it’s going to be just like every other Windows Phone running Mango, and it’s supposedly going to come with a large 4.5 inch screen. Why then did AT&T opt to not talk about this device? Could it be because they want to get rid of all their Focus S inventory? Do they feel that having two Windows Phones in their portfolio is a safer bet than having three?
We’ll find the answers to these questions soon enough. Note that a huge wireless conference called Mobile World Congress is scheduled to take place at the end of next month. Traditionally it’s been a place where handset vendors announce devices that end up in Europe and Asia first, but said devices eventually end up crossing the pond. Take the Samsung Galaxy S II for example. Announced in February 2011 at MWC, launched in April in Europe, it hit America in September. Samsung may want to announce the Mandel at MWC instead of CES to make their presentation more interesting, that’s also a possible scenario. Knowing Samsung, they love to announce a bucket full of phones at a time instead of a handful every quarter.
Anyway, are you looking forward to a 4G LTE Windows Phone? If so, which one are you going to buy?
[Via: Unwired View]